Alexander Thayer

Educational interfaces, software, and technology

One of the primary goals of teaching is to prepare learners for life in the real world. In this ever changing world of technologies such as mobile interaction, cloud computing, natural user interfaces, and gestural interfaces like the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect people have a greater selection of tools for the task at hand. Teachers and students can leverage these tools to improve learning outcomes. Educational interfaces and software are needed to ensure that new technologies serve a clear purpose in the classrooms and homes of the future. Since teachers are always looking for creative ways to engage 21st century learners there needs to be an academic venue for researchers to discuss novel educational tools and their role in improving learning outcomes. This workshop aims at filling this void: combining the pedagogical expertise of the cooperative learning, and learning sciences communities with the technical creativity of the CHI, UIST and interactive surface communities. The objective of this workshop is to become a conference within two years.

Research-driven stakeholders in cyberinfrastructure use and development

Research has shown that failing to recognize and understand organizational subgroups, their cultures, and their reward systems can result in a failure of system adoption. Infrastructure building projects for science are complex forms of collaborative work that involve many subgroups. As part of an ongoing research project, we use ethnographic methods to explore the roles, categories, and relationships that are sometimes taken for granted in cyberinfrastructure research and development. We investigate the difficulty of modeling stakeholders in the development of research-driven, large-scale scientific research and describe the importance of identifying stakeholders according to research questions in addition to organizations or workplaces.

Material culture analysis and technical communication: the artifact approach to evaluating documentation

Usability testing and documentation review are vital components of every documentation release cycle; yet some project timelines and budgets overlook these essentials. The art history process of material culture analysis can help alleviate this oversight. Applied to documentation, material culture analysis can provide insight into the writers personal values to expose potentially detrimental mismatches between the values of the writer and of the intended audience.